1965: Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)

1965: Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
When I was a junior in college, I went to France on one of my school's year long programs.  Part of the deal was that the school paid some young French kids to show us around and, in some ways, be our friends.  

One day, another American and I were sitting in a cafe with one of these French "paid friends", a girl (Magali Faventines), and we got to talking about American culture.  Magali asked us to jot down on a piece of paper our three favorite American movies and three favorite American books.  Then we asked if she'd reciprocate by giving us her favorite French titles.  At this point, I can't remember what books she suggested.  But I distinctly remember her going on and on about this one French director, this guy Jean-Luc Godard.  In fact, two of the three titles she listed were Godard films, Breathless and Pierrot le fou.   

I was 20 at the time and could probably count on one hand the number of foreign films I'd seen.  So of course I'd never heard of Godard.   Lucky for me though, I was living in Paris, cinephile mecca, and it just so happened the following week that Pierrot was playing at one of the local theaters.  So I took this girl I was kinda seeing and we set out to learn a little more about this Godard guy. 

When we saw Pierrot, of course it was in French with no English subtitles.  The girl I was with, another American, definitely found it interesting.  I thought it was absolutely mind-blowing.  In fact, it struck me as the most personal, most intelligent, most liberated film I had ever seen.  And really from that point forward, you could certainly make the argument that my life changed.  I became more and more interested in seeking out films like Pierrot.  In fact, that year, I must have easily seen over 100 movies in the theater.  I had found my path.  

I tell this story because it's hard for me to separate the discovery of Pierrot from Pierrot the film. It is easily the film that has had the greatest impact on me and the one that is almost singlehandedly responsible for me becoming a cinephile and filmmaker.  

What do I think about it now?  I still think it's one of the most personal, liberated, and intelligent films I've ever seen.  I also think it's one of the most beautiful, lyrical, playful, romantic, and dangerous.  A friend of mine used to say, he would show each new girlfriend Pierrot, and if they didn't care for it, that was his litmus test that the relationship was doomed.  My wife has never seen it, and it's not for everyone.  But I think it's in a small group of films that has that "Beatles or Velvet Underground power".  In other words, the kind of film that has some rare transformative charge.

If nothing else, see it if you want to see "passion on fire".  It's not every day the opportunity comes around.  

Other contenders for 1965:   I still have quite a few things to see. These include:  Luis Bunuel's Simon of the Desert, Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee, Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More, William Wyler's The Collector, Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl, Jerzy Skolimowski's Walkover, Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde, Wojciech Has' The Saragossa Manuscript, and Miklos Jancso's The Round-Up. It's been too long since I saw Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight.  At some point I need to revisit both of them to know where they'd place on this list.  And, although I don't have any close runners-up this year, I do really like Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville and Masculin feminin and Howard Hawks' Red Line 7000.

5/14/11 I watched Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde.  Forman shows a very effortless style and subtle, unforced humanity.  There's also a good bit of humor.  After awhile though, I found it a little aimless to a fault, but overall, a nice, early work.  

5/19/11 I watched Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker.  A tough, uncompromising film with an incredibly depthful and pained Rod Steiger performance at its core.  The ending seems to defy plot logic though (the police never come into the pawn shop?), and Lumet seems a little too enamored with his cross-cutting flashback technique.  

5/20/11 I watched Wojciech Has' The Saragossa Manuscript.  Offbeat, novelistic, and one of the most labyrinthine narratives I have ever seen. Has seems to have influenced later Bunuel and pulls this extraordinarily tale off in a way that seems so confident and effortless. Not totally my thing, but I have the utmost admiration for the cinematic achievement on display.    

5/22/11 I watched William Wyler's The Collector.  Terence Stamp is absolutely fantastic in the role.  But the movie's too one-note and eventually becomes pretty tiresome.

5/24/11 I watched Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl.  My first experience with Sembene, and on first look, it feels like a cinema under the influence of the Nouvelle Vague.  It has its moments of poetry and lyricism, but some of the acting felt forced, and the the direction a little passionless.  Of interest, but didn't impact me at the level of its reputation.  

6/12/11 I watched Luis Bunuel's Simon of the Desert.  Another irreverent and satiric look at religion from Bunuel. This one definitely experiments in an exciting way Bunuel's continued interest in surrealistic techniques, but as is often the case with his work, his irony and lack of much warmth keep me at a pretty good distance.  

4/12/14 I watched Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket.  It is an incredibly assured and confident debut film.  The acting is probably what impresses most of all at first glance and then Bellocchio's ability to shift between tones and styles.  It is a grim, nearly nihilistic work that is easy to admire but harder for me to love.  

8/7/17 I watched Terrence Young's Thunderball.  Although not considered the best Connery as Bond film, of all that I have seen so far it is Connery at his most brash, his most handsome and at his toughest.  Yes, it has a bit of a bloated ending but there are so many other great moments that far outweigh its final minutes.  

2/27/18 I watched Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur.  Varda has whimsy and her freewheeling sensibility can sometimes be refreshing.  But this film just feels dated and underwhelming compared to the great New Wave films of the same era.  

10/20/18 I watched Noel Black's Skaterdater.  One of the most powerful shorts I have ever seen.  It captures adolescence and Socal in the mid 60s and renders them as vivid as Lamorisse in The Red Balloon. 

12/28/21 I watched Antonio Pietrangeli's I Knew Her Well.  The film is interesting as a combination of Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Antonioni's urban alienation work from the sixties.  

1/13/22 I watched Jerzy Skolimowski's Walkover.  Skolimowski continues to be a filmmaker that intrigues me.  This is the fourth of his features I have seen, after seeing Le Depart, Moonlighting and Essential Killing.  All four films are incredibly different in their style and subject matter although in each Skolimowski proves he possesses an unusually strong cinematic eye as well as exceptional feel for the effectiveness of a camera capturing movement on film.  Walkover exudes that very New Wave quality of youth meandering through a city trying to find purpose and place.  The final ten minutes, in particular, churn up heaps of cinematic energy and leave the viewer with an outlook on life that powerfully captures a new generation's desire to reject the ways of the past.   

1/14/22 I watched Alexander Mackendrick's A High Wind in Jamaica.  It's a film that sneaks up on you with its unusual treatment of Stockholm syndrome .  Coburn and Quinn are excellent as usual and the performance by young Deborah Baxter is quite affecting.  

7/15/22 I watched Ebrahim Golestan's The Crown Jewels of Iran.  An interesting short that suggests Iran was once a country only interested in accumulating material wealth that has transitioned to placing value on ideas and intellect. 

1964: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

1964: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
It's hard to think of many American equivalents, perhaps John Huston's The Dead and some of the final films from Howard Hawks and John Ford.  What I'm talking about is when a director, towards the end of their career, starts making these films that are so pure, so refined, that they take on a whole other form.  Ever chew on a Saltine for a really long time?  Okay perhaps that's not the best example, but it will at least lead you in the right direction of my point.  

Simply put, Gertrud is a UFO that doesn't quite feel like a normal film. There's something very abstract about it, something off and naked about it all.  It's distilled to the point of being transformative.  

It's enough that I find the unique form of Gertrud incredibly fascinating.  But I also respond to it as one of the most powerful love stories ever put on film.  And, if these two things weren't already enough, I'll say this:  I can't think of any final moment in any work, in any medium, that more precisely offers closure on a great artist's career.

Other contenders for 1964: A good number of things I still need to see.  These include:  Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba, Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert, Cy Endfield's Zulu, Frank Tashlin's The Disorderly Orderly, and Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet.  I need to revisit Satyajit Ray's Charulata, Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, and Peter Glenville's Becket (high school English class) as it's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  This year I really like Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport and Don Siegel's The Killers.  I love Francois Truffaut's The Soft Skin, Bernardo Bertolucci's Before the Revolution, Chris Marker's La jetee, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove..."  My closest runner-up is Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie.

12/27/10 I watched Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe.  Interesting that this and Dr. Strangelove... both came out this year.  Lumet's film is somewhat naturalistic, absent of music, and told almost without humor or obvious satire.  I thought it could have benefitted from color rather than black-and-white, as its earnestness feels stilted because of its aesthetic.   But as is often the case with Lumet, it is well-told and well-acted.  I just never fully connected to anyone onscreen.  

5/18/11 I watched Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Parajanov's style is kinetic and certainly unique.  But I found its poetic, slightly non-narrative ambitions quickly frustrating, and was very rarely absorbed in any way.  

7/24/11 I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew.  Intimate and personal telling of the Jesus story by Pasolini. He gives it a very stylish and immediate feel with an abundant use of the zoom and handheld camera.  

10/15/11 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Une Femme Mariee. Provocative as usual chez Godard, but this one is so cerebral as to become distancing compared some of my favorite of his films from this period. 

1/8/12 I watched Robert Rossen's Lilith.  An unusually demented work about the mentally ill.  Form merges into content in a very admirable way, but this isn't completely my kind of thing.  The sickness finally becomes so claustrophobic as to shut off my empathy valve a bit.  

1/8/12 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert.  I definitely have a take it or leave it attitude when it comes to Antonioni's work.  I always admire his framing and extraordinary eye, but his fascination with bourgeois loneliness in the early sixties just simply leaves me uncaring.  

10/31/13 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: An Odyssey: The Shock of the New - Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.  A little less exciting than I hoped, covering perhaps my favorite period in all of film history.  But I did enjoy Cousins' treatment of Bergman and Bresson.  I just wish he went a little deeper into the Nouvelle Vague and touched on Melville. 

11/24/13 I watched Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.  The music and Leone's use of it are still so fresh and fascinating today.  And he certainly found the perfect anti-hero in Eastwood.  But this one is not totally my thing.  I prefer later Leone when he had more money and his artistry replaced a little of the crudeness at the fore.

12/5/15 I watched Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger.  An entertaining Bond for sure even if I felt it lost a little steam by the time they got to Fort Knox.  The gadgets are great and the first 30 minutes are extremely top shelf Bond.  

3/5/17 I rewatched Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  I was frustrated by the backlash against La La Land.  And I was confused by the critical preference for Moonlight.  Sure, Chazelle's film had the more robust budget.  But I felt like his film also had far more filmmaking rigor than Jenkins' and that Chazelle's formal approach in general was much clearer and achieved at a significantly higher level.  And when I hear someone compare Moonlight's color palate to the incredible work Doyle and Wong Kar-wai achieved together I really don't see it at all.  
With that out of the way,  I was looking forward to rewatching Demy's film, cited as a key influence on La La Land.   I remembered Demy's work with color as among the most impressive in film's history and it was as brash and beautiful as I remembered.  The pinks, purples, and splashes of bold colors of Demy's cinema certainly find their way into some of the clothes and onto some of the sets of La La Land (most noticeably in Emma Stone's apartment and her roommates' outfits).  What I did not remember though is just how bittersweet and powerful the final minutes of Cherbourg are.  Rewatching it now, if you felt it like I did, it seems that the secret behind the emotional power of some of La La Land's final exchanges is Chazelle tapping into the same cinema magic Demy concocted for Cherbourg's last moments.  Both films explore unrequited and both get deep rewards for staying on the other side of happily ever after.  

1/29/18 I watched Vincente Minnelli's Goodbye Charlie.  A bit too zany for my taste but interesting as yet another loose installment on Minnelli's obsession with Hollywood and his deep ambivalence about the system in which he made a great name for himself.  

3/3/18 I watched Eric Rohmer's Nadja in Paris.  A little known short by Rohmer is yet another great installment in the tremendous Nouvelle Vague body of work from 1958-1965.  It is ten minutes or so of pure voiceover but Rohmer announces early his extraordinary skill for capturing women and the streets and people of Paris.  

6/25/20 I watched Martin Scorsese's It's Not Just You, Murray!  A pretty clinical and unemotional early short from Scorsese that's of greatest interest for already displaying some of the visceral camera moves that would become prevalent in Scorsese's later work.

12/7/20 I watched Maurice Pialat's Bosphore.  It is striking how much weight Pialat's early work already carries.  Much of it comes from his extraordinarily strong framing but it also his depthful voiceover and his editing that confidently moves from static shot to static shot interspersed with a few beautifully orchestrated moves of the camera.

1/15/22 I watched Cy Endfield's Zulu.  I've only seen three of his films but I feel completely confident in saying that Cy Endfield is a name that should be far more common and known in cinephile circles than it is.  Each of his films has a strong directorial presence and a position to the material that encourages contemplation without being distancing.  Although not my area of expertise, I can't think of a war film set up in remotely the same way as Zulu.  We remain in one location for the first two hours with very little in terms of plot advances as we get to know characters as they prepare for what is probably their final battle.  

1963: Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)

1963: Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)
I've long considered Paul Schrader the most articulate chronicler of The New Hollywood, that unusually great period for American cinema from approximately 1967-1980.  In much the same way, I've always felt that Jean Douchet, more than anyone else, excelled when it came to looking at The French New Wave.  In his fantastic book, appropriately entitled French New Wave, Douchet makes the following statement:

"This young generation felt that beauty was refracted through goodness and truth, lucidity and struggle, in short, by a spirit of resistance, and that ugliness often prolonged a collaborationist mentality..."

This statement rings especially true for me because when I think about some of my favorite French New Wave films, aside from their infectious playfulness, the thing I love most is their startling beauty.  Take Contempt, for instance, which I consider in the following way:

1.  One of the five most beautiful scores in the history of film.
2.  One of the five most beautiful women, also in the history of film.
3.  One of the five most beautiful color films ever made.
4.  Some of the most beautiful footage of water ever put on film.
5.  And one of the most beautifully perfect endings of any film I've ever seen. 

I think people sometimes forget this aspect of The French New Wave. Sure, there was an emphasis on a certain looseness and a more naturalistic approach.  But that was always at the service of esthetic beauty and lyricism.  And, when it comes to beauty, of all the French New Wave films, I put Contempt right up there at the very top. 

Other contenders for 1963: I have some things I still need to see from this year.  These include:  Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (a bit embarrassed about this one), Luis Garcia Berlanga's El Verdugo, Ingmar Bergman's The Silence, Joseph Losey's The Servant, Robert Wise's The Haunting, Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor, Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor, Alain Resnais' Muriel, Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine, and Elia Kazan's America, America.  I haven't seen Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies since we watched it in high school English class.  So I need to revisit it at some point to know where it'd place on this list.  I really like Orson Welles' The Trial and Martin Ritt's Hud.  I love John Sturges' The Great Escape and Stanley Donen's Charade. And my closest runner-up is Luchino Visconti's The Leopard.  

1/5/11 I watched William Asher's Johnny Cool.  It's a worthwhile noir, very obscure, that I was happy to catch.  Henry Silva is fantastic as the titular character.  And the opportunity to see a pre-Bewitched Elizabeth Montgomery is a real treat.  Has a nice naturalism to it and some memorable, raw moments, particularly the bomb in the swimming pool.  

5/12/11 I watched Forough Farrokzad's The House is Black.  This short film has a huge reputation, and I was very glad to see it.  There's a certain poetry in it and an unflinching determination to show leprosy in a non-judging manner.  I admired it, although I can't say I was particularly engrossed in it.  Perhaps I am too uncomfortable with the subject matter.  Whatever the reason, the experience was more one of admiration than feeling.  

5/15/11 I watched Robert Wise's The Haunting.  Did not really do much for me.  I didn't find it terribly atmospheric nor frightening.  But Wise does demonstrate some inventiveness in terms of moving the camera.  

5/17/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's The Silence.  The first half felt incredibly alive, sexually charged and quite unlike anything else I've seen from Bergman.  But the second half settled into heavy symbolism, Bergman's usual fascination with human pain and suffering, and lost much of its vitality and interest for me.  

6/14/11 I watched Federico Fellini's 8 1/2.  Several of the sequences are absolutely masterful, including the beginning and the ending.  And Fellini certainly shows himself to be one of the most uninhibited filmmakers to ever work in the medium.  But his taste for absurdism keeps me at a distance, and as personal as the film may be, I still find it a bit cold.  

7/15/12 I watched Elia Kazan's America, America.  Although thorough, clearly personal, and more often than not visually stimulating, I also found it uneven and overlong.  I prefer Kazan in more intimate registers.  

5/19/14 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Les carabiniers.   One of those early Godard films I could not find when I first started getting into JLG and then that I kind of avoided thinking it nearly unwatchable.  Well it is a tough watch.  But it's interesting in its deadpan tone and its unexpected lyricism that emerges at moments.  

11/29/15 I watched Terrence Young's From Russia with Love.  Often considered one of the very best of the Bond films, it is pretty taut and well-conceived.  Personally I found the girl lacking much interest but was fascinated to see Robert Shaw in such an early and strong performance.  

5/24/18 I watched Ermanno Olmi's I Fidanzati.  It is this interesting mix of Antonioni visuals and tone of alienation mixed with Rossellini's feel for the people and the working class.  There are some extraordinary scenes, particularly when Olmi drops out all sound such as when the two main characters are swimming together and along the beach.  But in its entirety it never fully moved me.  

4/7/20 I watched Jean Eustache's Du cote de Robinson.  Interesting more than anything else as an early look at Eustache's style, his interest in his generation and the streets of Paris at the fore.

12/31/20 I watched Adolfas Mekas' Hallelujah The Hills.  As Nouvelle Vague as any American film from the early Sixties I have seen.  It is impressive in its looseness and spirit of deconstruction.  But it is difficult to connect very much to anyone onscreen.

7/15/22 I watched Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures.  I did not see a great print.  But my impressions were that it got a little repetitive after a while.  From a stylistic point of view, it seems to have been a massive influence on Lynch, both in the way he utilizes early rock 'n roll juxtaposed with awkward subject matter (Orbison in Blue Velvet for instance) and the masterful way he plays with frame rate in many of his later works, particularly in a staccato and distortive manner.

10/27/23 I watched Sam Peckinpah's The Dick Powell Theatre "The Losers".  Peckinpah seems under the influence of Zazie and even though there are a couple of great moments it all feels thin and dated compared to what he would go on to achieve.

3/31/24 I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's La Ricotta.  A film that impresses by Pasolini's instinctive feel for the medium.  He has a lightness of touch even as he gazes and ponders serious political and religious themes.    

1962: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)

1962: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
I have a thing for great directors' later works.  I love Dreyer's Gertrud, Bresson's L'argent, even John Huston's The Dead (and the list could go on).  There's an element of spring cleaning that occurs in these later works.  A director looks at their tools and gets rid of all but the most essential.  

I still have a good many Ford films to see, but I've always felt that Ford could take an unusually "spare" eye to landscape.  Meanwhile, to avoid being too minimal, too abstract, Ford would often counter with frames of hundreds of people conversing, battling, or whatever the film might demand.  Valance is the first of Ford films I have seen that keeps everything from the landscapes to the interiors a little more stripped down.  I like the austerity of it and the uncluttered nature of it all.  

I guess I'm also a formalist since certain stylistic elements of filmmaking can singlehandedly determine whether I care for a film. The way that Ford shoots the titular scene is among the most formally solid and brilliantly executed moments I have ever seen.

I love Ford's humanity in the film, but that's not what I love about Valance the most.  What I truly love here is kicking back with a master director as they share a little of the distilled stuff.  

Other contenders for 1962: I still have a number of things to see from this year.  These include:  Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker, Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses, Tony Richardson's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Forough Farrokhzad's The House Is Black, Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon, Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso, Robert Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc, J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear, and Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird.  At some point, I need to revisit Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos as none of them impacted me on first viewing like I would have expected.  I also need to re-watch Jean Renoir's The Elusive Corporal and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate as it's been too long since I saw either to know where they'd place on this list.  But I really like Stanley Kubrick's Lolita.  I love David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Howard Hawks' Hatari!, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. Meanwhile, my closest runner-up is Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie.


4/26/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light.  Although Bergman's religious obsessions are far from my own chief concerns, I did really connect to the previous film in his trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly.  This one though moved me far less.  It felt heavily talky, visually claustrophobic, and even a bit forced narratively.  Its major reputation was a bit lost on me.  


4/30/11 I watched Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker.  Heavy and unsettling as it is moving and real.  Patty Duke's performance surely must go down as one of the greatest child performances in the history of the medium.  Penn demonstrates a willingness to take on an extremely difficult subject head-on and to go all the way with it.  Even though cinematically I might have wanted some things done differently, Penn really delivers with the emotional elements.  


5/2/11 I watched Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso.  I've long known this as one of Scorsese's favorites, and it certainly doesn't disappoint.  But it doesn't meet expectations either.  There's far less violence than one would imagine.  The tone more often resembles a vivacious and sunny foreign film than a somber and serious-minded noir.  And Lattuada shows an unexpected assertiveness with his editing, movement of the camera, and ability to juggle different genres.  Lattuada also knows how to make great use of music to heighten the action (the jazz leading up to the barbershop sequence) and has no problem leaving the viewer with a great, big lump in his throat.  


5/3/11 I watched Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon.  Another strong film from Ozu.  Ozu seems like he was such a peaceful person, and his films move in a way that's as soft and gentle as anything I've ever seen in the medium.  This one is not as quite as perfect to me.  A couple of the acting and music cues seem slightly unsubtle.  But it's still a deep, engaged work, this time dealing with the emptiness that follows the marriage of one's children.  

5/9/11 I watched Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.  Dated now and feeling badly disjointed, in the Richard Lester style.  It still holds some power in its Tom Courtenay performance and unexpected ending. 


5/10/11 I watched Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird.  There is much to recommend here.  The movie captures the phobias and rather unjustified fears that come with childhood.  It also has a nice, surprising warmth and humanity that explains much of its lasting reputation.  The filmmaking is a bit uninspired, for the most part.  But Bernstein delivers musically a score of real strength and atmosphere.  


5/11/11 I watched Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  Aldrich keeps the drama and intensity wound incredibly tight. And the result is disturbing, but I liked it more than I expected.  There are moments that remind one of Aldrich's ability and that he was able to deliver one of the great noirs, Kiss Me Deadly.


5/24/11 I watched Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel.  I can't say that I necessarily understand all that Bunuel is saying with this one. But nonetheless, I feel comfortable saying it's too claustrophobic, morbid, and lifeless to grab me fully.  

9/21/13 I watched Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town.  So much of the film is mature, daringly dark, modern, and full of interesting feelings about Hollywood.  And maybe the tacked-on happy ending is part of that commentary, but it feels unsatisfying when compared to the rest of work.  Highlights include the incredible elevator shot and what feels like a very subtle use of slo-mo as Douglas, his ex, and her new man ride up together.  

11/10/13 I watched Agnes Varda's Cleo de 5 a 7.  More masterful than I remember from my first viewing more than twenty years ago, Varda's work separates itself from many of the early New Wave films by eschewing genre and delivering a film with a focus entirely on character.  Varda's camera glides and records capturing a realness of faces and of Paris.  And what we are left with is, as a capsule of its time, a film as valuable as Breathless, 400 Blows, and any of the other key Vague work from the early sixties.  

8/2/14 I watched Robert Bresson's Proces de Jeanne d'Arc.  One of the few films by the director that I had never seen and yet another reminder of his brilliance, uniqueness and above all clarity of approach.  Bresson is a master of restraint and finding small stylistic touches that add such interesting rhythm to his work, like the repetition of an eyehole and visitors peering through it to comment on  Joan.  Bresson is the Thelonious Monk of cinema or Monk the Bresson of music.  This work may lack some of the transcendence or full blown poetry of some of Bresson's other films - its subject matter and approach almost prevent it from the latter - but it is still a great film by one of the medium's five or ten greatest practitioners.  

9/21/14 I watched Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso.  It is amazing to step back and see the New Wave for what it was not only in France but as it touched Italy, England, Czech Republic and across the world.  What was it?  It was about championing the young over the old, the free over the responsible, the city over the country and beauty over decay.  This film is a great example of what it looked like in Italy in 1962 even if I still prefer how the French did it and particularly Godard, Truffaut, Demy, Rohmer, Rivette and Chabrol.  

2/9/17 I watched Terrence Young's Dr. No.  Connery looks great and immediately announces himself as one of cinema's most entertaining icons.  But the plot of this one is a little weak and very little of it rises to the level of the very best Bond.  

10/29/17 I watched Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine.  I watched a version on YouTube without subtitles so was unable to catch every word.  But, the film feels like the male version of Jules et Jim, or in other words, one male and two females.  I don't know Rozier's cinema yet but if this film is any indication he has the New Wave's keen interest and eye in youth, female beauty and the sea.  

10/27/18 I watched Jean Rouch's La punition.  Rouch stays in the streets of Paris and poetically captures a day in the life of a young Parisian girl during her formative years.  Most interesting are the last five minutes as the film shifts tone and becomes an expressionistic rumination. 

9/7/19 I watched J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear.  The first half was pretty unaffecting but Thompson shows some talent as he builds to the drama of the last thirty or so minutes.  Not top shelf noir in my book but still several great passages that are worth a watch.

3/27/20 I watched Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror.  Until now, I thought Edwards was a filmmaker who was pretty adept at making light, entertaining trifles.  But this film proves he could also do dark and moody when he set out to.  I could feel the New Wave's influence as Edwards does an extraordinary job capturing authentic San Francisco streets and homes and venues.  An ignored film from this period that deserves a much larger reputation. 

10/24/21 I watched Jean Renoir's Le caporal epingle.  Renoir's second to last feature revisits some of the same subject matter as La Grande Illusion but perhaps due to the Nouvelle Vague's influence takes on a more playful tone.  There are several wonderful scenes and Renoir's ability with actors is very evident but it never comes together fully like some of my favorite work by the French master.  

8/8/22 I watched Eric Rohmer's The Sign of Leo.  What is most striking is how different it feels from most of the rest of his work.  Whereas most of his movies focus on intereaction and long conversations between characters, this film mostly follows one character's greater and greater descent into isolation and despair.  In this way, it feels the most like Italian Neorealism.  I would argue that it's a director still in search of his strengths and his style while others praise it as one of the director's great works.

1/18/23 I rewatched Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country.  Timing is a critical part of appreciating certain works of art.  Sometimes you discover them when you're too young, sometimes when you're too old, and sometimes the timing is just right.  I have probably watched this early Peckinpah western 2 or 3 other times, never quite clicking it with like some of my peers.  But this time it was different.  As can be expected with Peckinpah, it takes you into some dark, uncomfortable places (Elsa's wedding night!)  What's less expected are the final minutes, the depth of humanity of Peckinpah's characters and the weight Peckinpah is finally able to leave you with as he pays tribute to the slow disappearance of a certain kind of man in a certain kind of world.  

Sasha Alexander's new TV show coming to TNT!

Little late reporting on this one. But great news for Sasha Alexander and her new TV show:

http://www.daemonstv.com/2010/01/23/rizzoli-isles-first-look-with-angie-harmon-and-sasha-alexander/

1961: Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan)

1961: Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan)
I guess most of the time I'm a little skeptical of movies, music, even people that incessantly wear their heart on their sleeves.  The emotions can become so loud they threaten to squash everything else in their way, including thoughts and perspective.  I also have come to realize that, like anything else, there are ways to cheat in film.  Want to make someone cry?  Just throw on some particularly heartfelt music.  Want us to think what you're doing is cool?  Use an extended scene of slow-motion.  And the list goes on of course.


I imagine the above are all criticisms that could easily be lodged against this film (or most of Kazan's career for that matter).  But, as they say, the exception makes the rule, and this film completely cuts through any prejudgements I might have.  


Simply put, I find Splendor in the Grass to be one of the most moving, emotionally devastating films I've ever seen.  Along with Holiday, it's my favorite film about the pressures of conformity.  And, as I've said before, it's in a small group (Gertrud, Letter from an Unknown Woman, A Place in the Sun, The Shop Around the Corner, and Casque d'or) of my favorite love stories of all time.  The wonderful ending would also find a place in my top ten.  


Does it cheat?  Probably.  Does it wear its heart on its sleeve? Definitely. But do I care?  Here, not one bit.  




Other contenders for 1961: A good number of gaps this year.  These include:  Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three, John Ford's Two Rode Together, Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto, Anthony Mann's El Cid, Luis Bunuel's Viridiana, Samuel Fuller's Underworld U.S.A., Pietro Germi's Divorce, Italian Style, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's West Side Story, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman is a Woman, Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte, Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accatone, Jean-Pierre Melville's Leon Morin, pretre, and Roberto Rossellini's Vanina Vanini and Viva L'Italia!  I need to re-watch Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim at some point as I have struggled with it in the past.  I also need to revisit Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad and Agnes Varda's Cleo de 5 a 7  as it's been too long since I saw either to know where they would place on this list.  Of what I have seen, there's really no close runner-up.  But I do really like Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Jacques Demy's Lola. And I love Robert Rossen's The Hustler and J. Lee Thompson's The Guns of Navarone.


10/12/10 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman is a Woman.  Not absolute top-tier Godard in my book.  Full of some incredible moments and Godard's usual vitality, inventiveness, and playful spirit, but also quite tedious at times.  But Karina is beautiful as ever.

4/9/11 I watched Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three.  Manic, slapstick Wilder that's really not my thing.  But if you like this sort of film, this one's probably top shelf. 


4/18/11 I watched Anthony Mann's El Cid.  Mann is one of my all time favorite filmmakers.  What I admire most about him is his ability to simplify and to create moments of great psychological weight.  The latter in this epic is still present, however I think the format (the epic) works against Mann's strength of paring down and abstracting elements to their most essential.  


4/21/11 I watched Luis Bunuel's Viridiana.  I'm still not sure how I feel about Bunuel.  He's undoubtedly a very skilled director that achieves his desired intent.  However, I'm not sure I really connect to his sensibility. He seems to like the absurd and the ugliness of humanity, almost more than the beauty.  This one ultimately left me cold, although I can see where it might have inspired some Kubrick and even some films like Five Easy Pieces.  


4/22/11 I watched Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto.  Has the look of an early French New Wave film, but it lacks the verve and spunk of the French films from that period.  Strong performances, and a somewhat interesting look at the end of adolescence.  But all in all, I found it a little too ponderous, and not natural and flowing enough.   


4/22/11 I watched Jack Clayton's The Innocents.  A strong, disturbing film with some tremendous performances from Deborah Kerr and both child actors.  Ghost stories are not my thing, but there's no denying that Clayton demonstrates great control and a great ability for creating atmosphere and discomfort.  Flora's screams have to rank up there with the most disturbing, visceral moments in the history of the medium.  


4/22/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly.  I'm still relatively new to Bergman's work, and his "God trilogy", although interesting to me, I'm not sure I fully understand (or at least fully connect to, as it's not one of my own chief pursuits).  But Harriet Andersson is breathtakingly beautiful, and her acting deep and affecting.  And although some of the moments can feel slightly distant and elusive, I do respect Bergman's ability for crafting cinematically balanced works.  An art film, to a T, but certainly one to admire. 


4/24/11 I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accatone.  My first experience with a Pasolini film, and since it's his debut, seems like a good place to start.  I was probably most struck by how much an influence this must have been on Mean Streets.  Seems to be a key film for Scorsese's breakout work.  Also, very interested to see how Pasolini is taking the neorealist tradition and pushing it into something far more self-conscious (his extreme close-ups and interest in the zoom).  Without yet seeing anything else by Pasolini, I would simply call him gritty, decadent, and darker than De Sica or Rossellini.  


4/26/11 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte.  I like the way Antonioni lets people wander through his frames.  And I like the way he has a real feel for jazz from the period and lets it rolls around in the background of some of his scenes.  But there's something quite bloodless about the work and no real gift of release or transcendence by the end.  All in all, pure admiration but almost never really felt.  


5/5/11 I watched Allen Baron's Blast of Silence.  It's an extremely interesting actor-director noir.  I feel like it's a lesson in how voiceover can be too much and overwhelm a picture.  But Baron plays one of the most convincing hitmen I've ever seen, and his ability to convey angst and loneliness are masterful at times.  


6/18/11 I watched Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's West Side Story. One of the first things that jumped out at me is how much it seemed to influence both The Outsiders and Rumble Fish.  I would love to hear Coppola discuss this.  Most of the music is quite memorable (doesn't hurt having Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim as collaborators), and some of the choreography quite lively and striking. My biggest complaint is that the action and emotions sometime seem a little flat.  All in all though, one of the the grandest and most vital musicals ever made.  

5/12/13 I watched Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Hepburn is pitch perfect as the irresistibly dynamic yet damaged Holly Golightly. Edwards brings it all a real touch of class - exquisite wardrobe, painterly colors, patient cutting, and a smooth camera that glides around almost never calling attention to itself.  There's more depth and truth here than I recalled from my first viewing nearly twenty years ago. And a sadness emanating from Hepburn/Golightly that is all too similar to several of the women I have met in my life.    

7/21/13 I watched Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut's Une histoire d'eau.  An important historical document with Godard's voice already well evident.  Not an incredibly entertaining film but a must see if you are a New Wave completist.  

1/1/16 I watched Samuel Fuller's Underworld U.S.A.  Fuller's strengths - his constantly roving, expressive camera and his hard-hitting sensibility are at the fore while his weaknesses, such as a heavy hand creating believable romance and intimacy are hardly, if at all, noticeable.  Clearly an influence on later great works such as Carlito's Way and an argument as good as any that the noir cycle did not end with Touch of Evil in 1958 but was still going strong well into the sixties with important and powerful entries such as this.    

1/17/16 I watched John Ford's Two Rode Together.  I was happy to finally see this film that always seemed to be playing in Parisian theaters.  I guess it isn't unusual for Ford.  It is corny yet smart, entertaining yet artistic, expansive and intimate.  This film has some interesting thoughts about dealing with one's past and would be a great double feature with The Searchers to cue up a conversation around Ford and whether or not he was a racist when it came to the Indians.  

11/7/17 I watched Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's Chronicle of a Summer.  I have long known that Godard was a big fan of Rouch but this is the first of his films I have seen.  It is extraordinary.  It breaks the fourth wall in more sophisticated and interesting ways than Godard ever did and serves as the template for the docu style Godard would take into Masculin Feminin and several of his other films from the period.  A number of the scenes are magical including the long take of Marceline walking as the camera moves farther and farther away from her and watching the father impart mountain climbing lessons to his more risk-averse daughter.

11/23/18 I watched Jean Rouch's The Human Pyramid.  A very pure Rouch work but not as interesting as some of his other films.  

4/7/20 I watched Jean Eustache's Une soiree.  His first short in the version I saw was without sound.  It did not have great interest other than an opportunity to see some of Eustache's first filmed images.  

1960: Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut)

1960: Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut)

The thing I have always responded to most in the French New Wave films is their sense of playfulness.  Sure, the figureheads of perhaps cinema's greatest movement were the most knowledgeable cinephiles we've ever had.  They were also incredibly intellectual, well read and well versed in almost all things art.  But, in my favorite films by the group, it's watching their youthful exuberance as they experiment with a still very young medium that I find most inspiring. 


Truffaut once said, "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema.  I am not at all interested in anything in between."


Truffaut walks the walk, and Shoot the Piano Player expresses about as much joy in the medium as any film I've ever seen.  I also love its sense of romance, tragedy, and special lyrical quality.  It has one of my favorite scores of all time, and if I were ever teaching a class on voiceover, this is the first film I would use. 


I confess.  This is one of my five or so favorite films of all time.   

Other contenders for 1960: A good number of gaps this year.  These include: Satyajit Ray's Devi, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, Ritwik Ghatak's The Cloud-Capped Star, Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Fritz Lang's The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, Luis Bunuel's The Young One, Elia Kazan's Wild River, Michel Deville's Ce Soir Ou Jamais, Alexandre Astruc's La proie pour l'ombre, George Cukor's Let's Make Love, Budd Boetticher's Comanche Station, and John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (embarrassing but true).  I really need to re-watch Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers.  It's been too long since I saw it to know where it would place on this list.   And Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is one I need to continue to revisit as it's never had the impact on me of some other Hitchcock.  My closest runner-up this year is Jacques Becker's Le Trou.

3/14/11 I watched Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents.  An oddity, for sure, but with my favorite performance of Anthony Quinn.  Ray shows off his raw and lyrical tendencies, and there are a few fantastic moments, including the birthing of Quinn's son.


4/12/11 I watched Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques.  Makes me feel like Sautet's not a very good director.  Ventura's always fun to watch, and my favorite part was how close Delerue's music resembles his score to Shoot the Piano Player.  But otherwise, everything just felt a little hacked together.  


4/13/11 I watched Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. My first experience with the cinema of Naruse.  I like how he hits the streets in a way that we don't necessarily find with Ozu.  But this one lacked the depth of some of my favorite Ozu films, and the melodrama felt excessive and almost overbearing at times, in a way that Mizoguchi's work is able to avoid.  


4/13/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring.  There is much torment and anguish in Bergman's work.  And although I'm still new, for the most part, to his cinema, for this quality alone I can see why it has such a tremendous reputation.  His probing methods lead to producing unusual emotions, ones that seem fairly hidden and deep from most cinematic work.  But, ultimately, his harsh style and choice of subject matter most often result in leaving me pretty cold.  

1/1/13 I watched George Cukor's Let's Make Love.  Montand is always difficult for me, but Cukor keeps it lively, and there is vitality when very little else remains.

1/5/14 I watched Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  A young Albert Finney bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Ben Affleck though Affleck's talents may certainly not run as deep.  It is clear Reisz has seen Breathless, but this film is much closer than neorealism than the playfulness of the Nouvelle Vague.  I do not think I have ever seen a film that captures the grey, industrial England this well, and it is a committed character piece that is always believable even when not always that entertaining.  

9/21/14 I watched John Ford's Sergeant Rutledge.  Ford does Rashomon and seems determined to liberate himself from any claims of racism The Searchers might have created.  Given the typical poetic treatment by Ford, this one is compelling and is relatively lean Ford, even if ultimately its motives and similarities to other works take away from its power to affect.

12/30/15 I watched Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu.  Ray takes a few years away from his trilogy before coming back and completing it with this film, and the style feels a little different than the first two movies.  This film has a slightly more elliptical quality and seems intent on drifting closer to poetry.  The ending of the film is one of the very strongest moments of the entire trilogy with Ray attaining that transcendent experience of the great neorealist works.  

9/27/17 I watched Jerry Lewis' The Bellboy.  Lewis strikes me more than anything as an American Jacques Tati.  He has a great eye and, like Tati, is able to accomplish a great deal non-verbally.  He is not always quite as funny to me as Tati and I tire of him a little more easily than I do guys like Tati or even Keaton or Chaplin.

3/21/20 I watched Maurice Pialat's L'amour existe.  Pialat's early short film is already the work of a master even though the style is closer to Nouvelle Vague than the rigorous naturalism of Pialat's features.  It deserves to be seen by anyone interested in the New Wave, the short film form, Pialat or French cinema.  

4/15/20 I watched Robert Drew's Primary.  One of the first direct cinema documentaries, it is interesting to see Leacock, Maysles and Pennebaker all in the credits as collaborators.   I can tell the camera is more mobile than it might have been previously for documentaries but it still lacks some of the immediacy or poetic nature that Kiarostami, for instance, was able to bring to the medium in the next decade.

5/13/21 I watched Vincente Minnelli's Home from the Hill.  A film that really would not even be on my radar if it weren't for Richard Brody and his Twitter feed that I follow.  Aside from Some Came Running, I have been lukewarm about every other Minnelli film I have ever seen (probably ten or so others).  And I can completely see why this one might miss for many, from the heavy presence of its score to George Hamilton's acting to the Sirk-like histrionics.  If you can see past those elements, it makes a strong case for Minnelli's greatness.  Look at the grace at which the camera moves around the scenes, Minnelli's careful, emotive framing and the space and time he allows himself (150+ minutes) to explore the characters, the story, the setting.   

12/19/21 I watched Stanley Donen's The Grass Is Greener.  An interesting variation on the setup from His Girl Friday.  All four actors seem to be having fun and Donen pushes into some interesting thematic material as he puts the institution of marriage to question.

8/7/22 I watched Richard Brooks' Elmer Gantry.  As thorough an examination into religion in this country as any film I have ever seen.  Brooks' adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel lets us understand the undying appeal of religion and then questions all the ways it might deceive its followers.  Not always the most enjoyable filmmaking to listen to and watch.  But Brooks deserves to be commended for keeping this 150 minute epic on track and building it so that the third act is its most powerful.

3/21/23 I watched Elia Kazan's Wild River.  It does a pretty good job of capturing the underbelly of the south and what can be at times its nasty racism.   But it also all feels a little too amped up to make the emotions as effective as they could be.

8/21/23 I watched George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights.  The colors and Loren, and even the landscape, are at times memorable even if the story sometimes seems to lack a charge or focus. 

1959: Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)

1959: Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)

Restraint, specificity.  Simplicity, cinema distilled.  I understand that Bresson's approach is not for everyone, but I have always gravitated towards things that are spare, spartan, and clean.  Bresson's cinema is like meditation for me.  I enter all clumped and cluttered and exit reminded of what is most essential.


Or imagine being stuck on an island, without food for four or five days. Then, after an excruciating period, someone suddenly shows up with the most appetizing, most gourmet entree you've ever tasted (not a very large portion, mind you).  That's the way the ride feels for me with most of Bresson.  It is slow-going, even tough at times, but when the journey ends, it makes sense.  I understand the reasons I was subjected to such an experience.  


Pickpocket is my favorite Bresson.  I like Bresson in the contemporary, urban setting.  But I also love Mouchette, Au Hasard Balthazar, A Man Escaped, and L'argent. 


My biggest artistic obsession is a concern over our world (and movies) getting louder and faster every year.  Although even more extreme than where I'd like to land, Bresson is a template for me in terms of how to go in another direction. 
    

Other contenders for 1959: I have a good many gaps from this year, too.  These are:  Andre De Toth's The Day of the Outlaw, Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face, Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain, Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome, Satyatit Ray's The World of Apu, Jean Cocteau's Le testament d'Orphee, Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents, and Yasujiro Ozu's Floating Weeds.  I really need to re-watch William Wyler's Ben Hur and Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour as it's been too long since I saw either to know where they would place on this list.  I also need to revisit Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest as it's never impacted me like some of the other Hitchcock.  But I do really like Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura, John Cassavetes' Shadows, and Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge.  I love Roberto Rossellini's General della Rovere, Claude Chabrol's Les Cousins, and Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.  And my two closest runners-up are Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and (another one of my favorite films of all time) Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo.


4/5/11 I watched Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome.  Subtle and spare, Boetticher shows that he is one of the absolute masters of the austere, adult western.  It's also as clear as ever that Boetticher likes to present a certain code and morality, and that his eye for the outdoors was almost on par with that of Anthony Mann.


4/7/11 I watched Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face.  Almost feels like a Tourneur-Lewton film but even more dark and disturbing.  A unique and strong horror film, with some gut-wrenching scenes like the one up-close operation and the dog slaughter at the end.  


4/8/11 I watched Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain.  The horrors of war, and Ichikawa just keeps pounding this idea, image after image, scene after scene.  I found it more claustrophobic than The Burmese Harp and less satisfying as a result.  


5/24/11 I watched Yasujiro Ozu's Floating Weeds.  A revisit of one of his earlier works, this feels like minor Ozu.  Humanistic and full of some moments of great forgiveness but without the great depth of my favorite Ozu films.  


3/18/12 I watched Andre De Toth's Day of the Outlaw.  Raw, dark, and artful, there's something absolutely uncompromising about De Toth's work here.  The tone almost makes you think you're watching a horror film, but the pacing and cinematography feel more like European art film.  One of the most unique westerns I have ever seen and a key work of any genre.  

9/6/14 I watched Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning.  Ozu continues to dazzle.  There is so much life captured in his work.  And there is a surpising amount of levity to his approach and tone.  Although I might prefer a few of his other films, Good Morning would be an absolute masterpiece by most filmmaker's standards.  As a portrait on the fear of Westernization in the late fifties, this one has few if any rivals.  And it is interesting to see it as an influence on Kitano's style and as a bit of a sibling film to The 400 Blows.

9/7/14 I watched Roberto Rossellini's India: Matri Bhumi.  Yet another brilliant piece by one of my all time favorite filmmakers.  Rossellini teaches us about animals and makes us see them in ways we never have.  In the process he also makes us think about our own lives and how many humans have a choice to hunt, be hunted, or like Ramu the monkey at the end actually have no choices at all.  A brilliant look at India and a beautiful meditation on life.  

12/31/15 I watched Samuel Fuller's The Crimson Kimono.  Fuller's camerawork impressed me the most, it is expressionistic and it is emotional.  Unfortunately some of the writing lets him down and I never fully believed some of the emotional conflict which is really the hinge of the final half hour.  

2/19/17 I rewatched Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour.  I had not seen this since I first saw it in a Parisian arthouse in 1994.  It's a challenging film, strange and a bit of a huis clos but clearly the work of an unusally smart and thoughtful team (I'm thinking Resnais, Duras, Vierny and Delerue).  

6/10/18 I watched Jean-Pierre Melville's Deux Hommes dans Manhattan.  The black-and-white photography of the City is fantastic and it is pretty snappy for a Melville pic.  But I was never terribly invested in the plot.  Nothing really did it for me except for maybe the final minute.

3/30/20 I watched Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb.  I have long wanted to track down these two films that were made right at the end of Lang's career.  I knew they had a large reputation among some people I admire and were a little different than anything else he had done.  They actually share a lot in common with some of his pre-American work such as Spies or The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.  But what is new is the Indian setting and Lang's attitude and perspective.  As to be expected, Lang shoots precisely and constructs a number of excellent set pieces throughout the two films.  And the film's influence can be felt in films as different as Pierrot Le Fou  (Godard's shot directly looking at the hot sun) or all throughout the Indiana Jones trilogy.

4/11/20 I watched Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow.  With Abe Polonsky penning the script, there is certainly some interesting subtext, particularly related to racism.  But all in all, only a mediocre noir compared to the great films the genre has produced.

10/15/23 I watched Aram Avakian and Bert Stern's Jazz on a Summer's Day.  Most noteworthy for the footage of performances by Mahalia, Louis, Thelonious, Gerry Mulligan and Chico Hamilton.  Not terribly memorable otherwise.